ACCESS

Malmö and IfM demonstrate solid links towards renewable energy firsts

31 March 2021 - Published by Sophie Rabasch

The City of Malmö aims to become a predecessor in Sweden and Europe regarding greenhouse gas emissions by setting a goal of being entirely powered by renewable energy by 2030. 

The city also aims to showcase sustainable urban development despite global trends like growing population in urban areas and the increasing resources demand. The energy strategy's four main goals are that Malmö is supplied with 100% renewable and recycled energy; that Malmö has a long-term sustainable energy system with the security of supply; that greenhouse gas emissions in Malmö as a geographical area have decreased by 70% since 1990; and that the City of Malmö's organization has net-zero emissions.

In November 2020, IfM Engage supported the City of Malmö in their energy strategy definition work by carrying out a gap analysis to map out how the strategy addresses the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as well as test its consistency and subsequent governance regulations.

For this analysis, IfM has applied the linking grid tool, part of the ACCESS toolkit for smart grid technology planning and pilot upscaling. This tool helps to identify and evaluate through a scoring process one-to-one impact between regulations of two subsequent governance levels.

Four different strategic governance levels were considered based on the regulatory cascade:

  1. The 17 UN SDGs
  2. Malmö’s Strategic Policy Goals 2030 relevant to their energy strategy and environmental program. (10 in total)
  3. Result targets (13 in total) in four areas: reliable electric system, local energy-efficient and renewable energy supply, energy and resources efficient buildings and sustainable energy for transport.
  4. Subsequent strategies. (35 in total)

Seven delegates from the City of Malmö (reference group), who represented different stakeholder groups, participated in this process by scoring regulations interdependencies and analysing the results in a workshop in order to identify areas for improvements.

The gap analysis helped the city to find both stronger and weaker connections between the goals of the governance levels and the goals in the energy strategy and helped define which connections needed to be stronger.

 

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